The Founding of a Family

Family is so important to God and to our society. Family was God's idea and plan. So many thoughts and prayers fly into my head and heart about my children and their start on and the beginning and the founding of each of their families. Leaving your family of origin and starting a new unit is one of the deepest of life's offerings of the experience of pure unconditional love. Family is a gift that God offers us freely as a blessing, but that costs us dearly in learning daily lessons of every life joy and pain by choosing or not choosing to die to self and live for others in the most intimate way. The beginning of the journey is the commitment and passion for another that becomes the fabric of part of your soul, spirit and mind. A friendship with more phases that the sun, moon and stars. A love that grows deeper with every hurdle overtaken and every river crossed with splashes of joy or with just almost drowning completely. With the addition of each new member of the family comes with new blessings and challenges.


Nothing in this relationship remains in perfection except the formation of concrete unconditional love through the highs and the lows of a shared life. Humor being one of God's greatest gift to the successful bedrock of the building of the foundation of His creative mastering of the beloved, unique, and tender new creation. Like snowflakes, no two families are entirely alike. Some live as if the members are an extension of they themselves. Other live with the family as a partition in their fullness of the personality and participation in life itself. Still are those that find their unit of unconditional love, flawed and filled with failure, feeling as if it is and was a millstone around their necks. Many families feel phases of each of these.


If open and humbled, at times we learn more from failure than success. No one can ever really cure us from loneliness besides our creator. Behind every great achievement and personality trait is the flip side, and ugly upside down powerful character defect. Love of our life partners is the treasury of heaven here on earth. Sometimes we are flush in the flow of it's currency and other times we dip into such a debit that the darkness of the shadow of death may draw around us. Real respect and the testing of the form of love comes in acceptance of the ebb and flow of our own and others character defects and triumphs. With the addition of each new member of the family, new blessings and challenges to experience.


My father was not a great speaker but a very deep thinker and driven writer. Writing what he would speak if designed in that way where words could pour out. My mother was the words of honey. A soft place to fall with words like the healing balm of Gilead. Her words when spoken are full of fragrance mixed with a healing salve. This was the essence of how they were knit together to bring God's power to this earth in and through His love, flawed and brilliant with all the moments of their lives mixed together. These are two of the richest gifts and inheritance that they gave me. I stand on their shoulders. With such great gifts comes many areas of weakness and trial so that the gift can be refined with selfless purity.


As you are at the beginning of your creation of the tapestry of you own family, I write this to you to use to reflect on what you are bringing from your families of origin into the snowflake of your spirits and souls growing together.